Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Patio modesty

I bought outdoor fabric last year (oh god, maybe two years ago?) to make coverings for our balcony. I love having our large balcony, but you can see onto it from the alley behind our apartment and we aren't so great about always keeping it neat. I was starting to feel bad for our neighbors.

The reason I waited so long was because the sewing sounded like a huge pain. The fabric is thick and the pieces are long and I just didn't want to wrestle with it. I had a lightbulb moment when I realized I could just fake a hem with hot glue and call it a day. 15 minutes later we had balcony coverings. To be honest, sewing probably wouldn't have taken that much longer, but I had a mental block at this point.

I created a pocket hem along the top and we slid a hollow metal tube through it. The bottom is just regular folded over hem and I put grommets in that I can attach to the balcony railing. I used wire through the tube and the grommets for a sturdy attachment.

{balcony coverings}

As it turns out, I'm really glad I didn't bother with the sewing, because our balcony is very clearly not level (you can't see it in these photos, but it is really obvious and has me a little worried that the back half of our apartment will someday slide right off the building) and at some point I'm going to want to re-do these and account for that to make it look more level. I'm calling these a mock up.

{grommets}

How long will the hot glue hold up outside? I have no idea but so far it's withstood several weekends of heavy rain, a few incredibly windy nights and some sunny, hot days.

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